The VIIIth
9/28/2006, 02:55 PM
The 'Lost Bud Wilkinson Interview' - Part II
In late 1982, longtime Georgia Bulldog radio voice and college sports connoisseur Loran Smith began working on his book, "Fifty Years on the Fifty, the Orange Bowl Story." As part of his research, he sat down with former Oklahoma coach Bud Wilkinson at the Coaches Hall of Fame Football Clinic in Atlanta in February of 1983.
Smith used a few excerpts from the interview in the Orange Bowl book, but afterward the tape feel into a drawer full of interviews with other sports greats and was somewhat forgotten for 23 years until Smith came across it earlier this year. Smith forwarded it to Jakie Sandefer, who played for Wilkinson at OU in 1956 - 1958, and Sandefer in turn, shared it with OU Insider.com and Sooners Illustrated.
In Part I last month, Bud told how he landed at Oklahoma with Jim Tatum, and why Tatum left after one year to go to Maryland, leaving the OU coaching position vacant for Wilkinson.
The two coaches, each running the 'Split-T' offense they had developed together at Iowa Pre-Flight during WWII, were highly regarded for years afterwards as both programs flourished, winning four national championships within the next decade; Oklahoma in 1950; '55 and '56 and Maryland in 1953.
During that time, Tatum and Wilkinson and their respective teams met in two significant games in Sooner history with both meetings coming at the Orange Bowl, and with one of the teams being ranked No. 1 each time: Maryland in the 1954 Orange Bowl following the '53 season, and Oklahoma in the 1956 Orange Bowl following the undefeated '55 season.
The Interview - February 26, 1983:
In addition to the Terrapins having the No. 1 ranking, the '54 Orange Bowl also was the first Orange Bowl played in using the new 'one platoon' rules, installed for the 1953 season, and it marked a milestone in OU history as it was the first time the Sooners would meet an opponent coached by a former Oklahoma head coach. Part II begins with Smith and Wilkinson discussing the circumstances surrounding that '54 game:
Smith: Could you have gone to any other bowl that year?
"No, it was a conference rule at that time, so we had no choice. That was before the conference lock-ins and I think the Big 8 was one of the first conferences to get locked in other than the Pac 10 hosting the Rose Bowl and the Southwest Conference hosting the Cotton. The Orange Bowl was a much different circumstance. New Orleans is a unique city and certainly was a thrill for our kids to be there, but the ocean and the tropics - for a kid from Oklahoma, you're in a different world."
Smith: Maryland was No. 1 going into that '54 Orange Bowl. Was there any incentive to knock off No. 1?
"I don't think those things are incentive. I know that the press writes about them but all anybody's looking for is to play can play today. Those (other) things are incidental. You can't control how well you play - hopefully."
Smith: The game was New Years Day 1954. It was a 7 - 0 game. I'm sure a lot of attention was focused on you and (Maryland Coach) Jim Tatum.
"I really don't remember. Jim was not at Oklahoma very long. He was just there one season and memories are short and he'd gone to Maryland in '48, so you're talking about six years later. I don't recall that there was that much. I'd coached with him in the service, (under Don Faurot at Iowa Pre-Flight), and one year at Oklahoma. To the best of my recollection, we were both running the Split-T and that was it. I remember the game vividly because it was our second bowl game - no we had played in the Sugar Bowl three times, so it was our fourth bowl game, but we had two halfbacks, Larry Greg and Jack Ging.
Jackie went on to become a movie star of sorts in Hollywood, but the hardest thing to have happen in a spit-T offense is the guy that's faking for the ball to make a legitimate fake, because if he looks like he's got it, he's going to get hammered. All he has to do is look like he doesn't have it and it's kid gloves.
"I was asked to do a radio interview, about two or three days before the game and I took Ging and Greg with me. Driving back to the hotel, which at the time was about a 40 minute drive, they were telling me how they were going to fake harder for each other than when the other guy had the ball. I thought right then, 'we've got a chance to win.'
"We substituted on the clock - that was when you had to go both ways. Maryland had first down on the three, I think it was, first quarter and it was time to substitute. We put the alternate group in, wee called them, and they stopped them four straight times. Fourth down, it was maybe a foot, and they ran a lateral and I think it was Dick Noland who had the ball, I'm not positive, but very few plays you remember vividly.
Larry Greg who was playing safety, came up and Noland had turned up the field and Greg hit him on the one yard line and Greg wins the battle - Noland does not get across the goal line. Then we scrambled around, I really don't remember how we scored."
Smith: Your playing the National Champions, they're on the three yard line and you're telling me you put your alternate team in, at the end of the first quarter?
"No - midway through the quarter. I think we did it at ten minutes. What was unusual about it was that Maryland is on our three yard line, first down - when we put these guys in.
Smith: Why? Were you thinking they were fresh, be geared up?
"I was just not thinking at all. I was hoping we'd stop them, very honestly. We had always done it that way and they were expecting to get in and obviously they're going to be much fresher and ready to play than the guys who've already played ten minutes. It was just a logical, sensible thing to do.
Smith: Psychologically, you're putting like a relief pitcher in there to stop them . . .
"I think that probably had something to do with it. They weren't that dominate, but you stop someone at the three yard line with four downs, it's a major accomplishment, no matter what year you're playing football."
Smith: So at that point your two teams were of relative ability?
"No. No. They were in '56, but in '54 they weren't. This is one of the things that's overlooked in coaching. With two platoon football it's somewhat non-existent today and I can give you a big pitch why two platoon football is bad for college - I think it's terrible. Magnifies the recruiting problems immeasurably. Your 4.5 guy is not going to play which is going to improve the game because the 4.5 guy is unlikely to play defense. Maybe some who would and want to, but all the rest.
"What you've got now is a game of such specialists that if you don't have them you can't compete. Everybody knows who the good ones are so the recruiting pressure for those guys is twice as tense as it was. I'm not saying that you didn't get good athletes when you played both ways, but everybody had to be on the run and everybody had to be motivated and everybody had to do things they didn't naturally know how to do. All of those things.
"I just think it's a much better college game, but getting back to the point that I was going to make, the most overlooked thing about coaching is the ability to judge when the balance swings between the starter, who is better - but the fatigue factor takes his skill down; at which point does the fresh kid - who's not as good, play better than the starter for a period of time?
"People tell me in pro basketball that's what it's all about. Pro caches have to know how, and know each guy well enough that they never let them g over that hump - the other guy comes in there right now. That's really what we were doing. Alternate - we always called them alternate teams because we were always trying to build squad morale. They were very close, but not nearly as good.
"One bowl game that we played, I remember we had built this up enough and, I don't remember what the year this was, but in our final scrimmage before they went home for Christmas Vacation, the alternate team wanted to prove that they were better than our starting team so we set up and they went after each other. After about ten minutes one guy came over and said, 'Coach, we're convinced. Let's get this over with.'"
Smith: What was your bowl philosophy?
"The hardest thing about a bowl game is that the tempo changes totally. During the season you've got spring practice and pre-season and now you play your first game. We didn't do a lot of work during the season. Monday, the people who did not play would scrimmage for a while, and the people that played were in sweat suits. You can practice on Tuesday and Wednesday and a bit on Thursday, then Friday is not really a practice, it's just polish. So you really had three days to get ready to play and to get into this tempo.
"Now all of a sudden you've got six weeks. They've got to stay in shape. But a player will not be attentive and practice with discipline and diligence if he is confident that he knows what to do. His mind wanders. Ole approach was never to tell our team what our game plans were until we were at the site of the game and we had four or five days, and then to give it to them in the proper sequence so that if it's three days before the game and when that practice is over they wouldn't be so over confident that they knew exactly what they were supposed to do but their reaction to movement is what I'm talking about.
Two days before the game in practice, they now are confident as hell. They know how to do everything they're supposed to do and then they've got one day to brush up and bingo. That's easier said than done. But that was our objective.
Smith: You never pointed to a bowl game with any special approach or emphasis?
"No. One thing we did though, when we started doing this but it was when we were in the Orange Bowls, and I don't mean in any way - to be paranoid about someone going to scout your practice or whatever, but on the other hand from standpoint of using some subterfuge, maybe we leave a players playbook on a bus, or at a restaurant or something and someone may pick it up and they get it to the opponent - and it was fun to do this.
"We would draw up very elaborate offensive and defensive game plans and we'd be in Miami for a week and we'd leave them folded in different ways, left in different place and hopefully the opponent's going to find one, spend a lot of time practicing on it, and that's not what we're going to do at all. Just the opposite. We had our game plan, and then we had a fictitious game plan. But it was so totally different; we'd be in different formations than what we're gong to use. Different defensive alignments. All that kind of stuff."
Smith: Capsule and summarize the ability of that ’54 team – the team that played in the Orange Bowl in ’54 – your ’53 team.
"They were just – a football team being a team, that’s the best thing you can say about them. We had no great stars. J.D. Roberts who was player – by today’s standards he could still play, he could play for anybody, but he’s not that big by today’s standards. They just played together. They believed they could win and they were able to do it."
Smith: Tell me about (practicing for bowl games with) thirteen men on defense.
"Because of that experience that I described, the January 1, 1949 game, (the spying incident with LSU at the '49 Sugar Bowl), I was just never comfortable that you could control what would happen at a bowl game when you're there for five days and you don't really have any security that you can really count on. And I don't think there are a lot of people who are going to try to take advantage of that, but it was such a shock when this happened the first time.
"If you have thirteen people, and they're all wearing the same jersey, it's almost impossible to find out who's in the game or who isn't. If you're playing a 5 - 2 defense and you've got three linebackers in the game and five secondary people - which ones are in and which ones aren't? They can't tell because all of them are making their moves, but the coaches know who the two guys are who are supposed to be in and who's not.
"So it's really easy to coach. I just don't think that there's any way that you can effectively get the defensive pattern if you're doing it that way. The reason that you're not worried about offense is that they can know all of the plays that you've got, but they don't know when you're going to run them. But if they can practice against you defensive alignment it's a big help."
Smith: So you would always put your extra two guys in the secondary?
"No, we'd do it on the line of scrimmage too. The line isn't - you're either 'odd' or 'even' or you're in the gaps. It doesn't make all that big a difference, it's where the linebackers are shading or are they over shifting? Is the defensive secondary tilted right, tilted left, are they going to invert or what?"
Smith: Give me more detail, if you will, on how you might utilize them in the secondary.
"You're always going to have the two cornerbacks - so the other three guys are just set across the field. You don't know really whether they're rolled up to the left, or wherever they've rolled up to the right, because you don't know which of these deep guys are actually in the game.
Those are two defenses that you probably got. You've also got one where you're 'standard' - where you've got two and two. But who's going to come with the snap is dependant upon which way you've rolled up and if they don't know which way you're rolled up, they can't tell who's coming because you get two guys coming and they don't know who's for real."
In late 1982, longtime Georgia Bulldog radio voice and college sports connoisseur Loran Smith began working on his book, "Fifty Years on the Fifty, the Orange Bowl Story." As part of his research, he sat down with former Oklahoma coach Bud Wilkinson at the Coaches Hall of Fame Football Clinic in Atlanta in February of 1983.
Smith used a few excerpts from the interview in the Orange Bowl book, but afterward the tape feel into a drawer full of interviews with other sports greats and was somewhat forgotten for 23 years until Smith came across it earlier this year. Smith forwarded it to Jakie Sandefer, who played for Wilkinson at OU in 1956 - 1958, and Sandefer in turn, shared it with OU Insider.com and Sooners Illustrated.
In Part I last month, Bud told how he landed at Oklahoma with Jim Tatum, and why Tatum left after one year to go to Maryland, leaving the OU coaching position vacant for Wilkinson.
The two coaches, each running the 'Split-T' offense they had developed together at Iowa Pre-Flight during WWII, were highly regarded for years afterwards as both programs flourished, winning four national championships within the next decade; Oklahoma in 1950; '55 and '56 and Maryland in 1953.
During that time, Tatum and Wilkinson and their respective teams met in two significant games in Sooner history with both meetings coming at the Orange Bowl, and with one of the teams being ranked No. 1 each time: Maryland in the 1954 Orange Bowl following the '53 season, and Oklahoma in the 1956 Orange Bowl following the undefeated '55 season.
The Interview - February 26, 1983:
In addition to the Terrapins having the No. 1 ranking, the '54 Orange Bowl also was the first Orange Bowl played in using the new 'one platoon' rules, installed for the 1953 season, and it marked a milestone in OU history as it was the first time the Sooners would meet an opponent coached by a former Oklahoma head coach. Part II begins with Smith and Wilkinson discussing the circumstances surrounding that '54 game:
Smith: Could you have gone to any other bowl that year?
"No, it was a conference rule at that time, so we had no choice. That was before the conference lock-ins and I think the Big 8 was one of the first conferences to get locked in other than the Pac 10 hosting the Rose Bowl and the Southwest Conference hosting the Cotton. The Orange Bowl was a much different circumstance. New Orleans is a unique city and certainly was a thrill for our kids to be there, but the ocean and the tropics - for a kid from Oklahoma, you're in a different world."
Smith: Maryland was No. 1 going into that '54 Orange Bowl. Was there any incentive to knock off No. 1?
"I don't think those things are incentive. I know that the press writes about them but all anybody's looking for is to play can play today. Those (other) things are incidental. You can't control how well you play - hopefully."
Smith: The game was New Years Day 1954. It was a 7 - 0 game. I'm sure a lot of attention was focused on you and (Maryland Coach) Jim Tatum.
"I really don't remember. Jim was not at Oklahoma very long. He was just there one season and memories are short and he'd gone to Maryland in '48, so you're talking about six years later. I don't recall that there was that much. I'd coached with him in the service, (under Don Faurot at Iowa Pre-Flight), and one year at Oklahoma. To the best of my recollection, we were both running the Split-T and that was it. I remember the game vividly because it was our second bowl game - no we had played in the Sugar Bowl three times, so it was our fourth bowl game, but we had two halfbacks, Larry Greg and Jack Ging.
Jackie went on to become a movie star of sorts in Hollywood, but the hardest thing to have happen in a spit-T offense is the guy that's faking for the ball to make a legitimate fake, because if he looks like he's got it, he's going to get hammered. All he has to do is look like he doesn't have it and it's kid gloves.
"I was asked to do a radio interview, about two or three days before the game and I took Ging and Greg with me. Driving back to the hotel, which at the time was about a 40 minute drive, they were telling me how they were going to fake harder for each other than when the other guy had the ball. I thought right then, 'we've got a chance to win.'
"We substituted on the clock - that was when you had to go both ways. Maryland had first down on the three, I think it was, first quarter and it was time to substitute. We put the alternate group in, wee called them, and they stopped them four straight times. Fourth down, it was maybe a foot, and they ran a lateral and I think it was Dick Noland who had the ball, I'm not positive, but very few plays you remember vividly.
Larry Greg who was playing safety, came up and Noland had turned up the field and Greg hit him on the one yard line and Greg wins the battle - Noland does not get across the goal line. Then we scrambled around, I really don't remember how we scored."
Smith: Your playing the National Champions, they're on the three yard line and you're telling me you put your alternate team in, at the end of the first quarter?
"No - midway through the quarter. I think we did it at ten minutes. What was unusual about it was that Maryland is on our three yard line, first down - when we put these guys in.
Smith: Why? Were you thinking they were fresh, be geared up?
"I was just not thinking at all. I was hoping we'd stop them, very honestly. We had always done it that way and they were expecting to get in and obviously they're going to be much fresher and ready to play than the guys who've already played ten minutes. It was just a logical, sensible thing to do.
Smith: Psychologically, you're putting like a relief pitcher in there to stop them . . .
"I think that probably had something to do with it. They weren't that dominate, but you stop someone at the three yard line with four downs, it's a major accomplishment, no matter what year you're playing football."
Smith: So at that point your two teams were of relative ability?
"No. No. They were in '56, but in '54 they weren't. This is one of the things that's overlooked in coaching. With two platoon football it's somewhat non-existent today and I can give you a big pitch why two platoon football is bad for college - I think it's terrible. Magnifies the recruiting problems immeasurably. Your 4.5 guy is not going to play which is going to improve the game because the 4.5 guy is unlikely to play defense. Maybe some who would and want to, but all the rest.
"What you've got now is a game of such specialists that if you don't have them you can't compete. Everybody knows who the good ones are so the recruiting pressure for those guys is twice as tense as it was. I'm not saying that you didn't get good athletes when you played both ways, but everybody had to be on the run and everybody had to be motivated and everybody had to do things they didn't naturally know how to do. All of those things.
"I just think it's a much better college game, but getting back to the point that I was going to make, the most overlooked thing about coaching is the ability to judge when the balance swings between the starter, who is better - but the fatigue factor takes his skill down; at which point does the fresh kid - who's not as good, play better than the starter for a period of time?
"People tell me in pro basketball that's what it's all about. Pro caches have to know how, and know each guy well enough that they never let them g over that hump - the other guy comes in there right now. That's really what we were doing. Alternate - we always called them alternate teams because we were always trying to build squad morale. They were very close, but not nearly as good.
"One bowl game that we played, I remember we had built this up enough and, I don't remember what the year this was, but in our final scrimmage before they went home for Christmas Vacation, the alternate team wanted to prove that they were better than our starting team so we set up and they went after each other. After about ten minutes one guy came over and said, 'Coach, we're convinced. Let's get this over with.'"
Smith: What was your bowl philosophy?
"The hardest thing about a bowl game is that the tempo changes totally. During the season you've got spring practice and pre-season and now you play your first game. We didn't do a lot of work during the season. Monday, the people who did not play would scrimmage for a while, and the people that played were in sweat suits. You can practice on Tuesday and Wednesday and a bit on Thursday, then Friday is not really a practice, it's just polish. So you really had three days to get ready to play and to get into this tempo.
"Now all of a sudden you've got six weeks. They've got to stay in shape. But a player will not be attentive and practice with discipline and diligence if he is confident that he knows what to do. His mind wanders. Ole approach was never to tell our team what our game plans were until we were at the site of the game and we had four or five days, and then to give it to them in the proper sequence so that if it's three days before the game and when that practice is over they wouldn't be so over confident that they knew exactly what they were supposed to do but their reaction to movement is what I'm talking about.
Two days before the game in practice, they now are confident as hell. They know how to do everything they're supposed to do and then they've got one day to brush up and bingo. That's easier said than done. But that was our objective.
Smith: You never pointed to a bowl game with any special approach or emphasis?
"No. One thing we did though, when we started doing this but it was when we were in the Orange Bowls, and I don't mean in any way - to be paranoid about someone going to scout your practice or whatever, but on the other hand from standpoint of using some subterfuge, maybe we leave a players playbook on a bus, or at a restaurant or something and someone may pick it up and they get it to the opponent - and it was fun to do this.
"We would draw up very elaborate offensive and defensive game plans and we'd be in Miami for a week and we'd leave them folded in different ways, left in different place and hopefully the opponent's going to find one, spend a lot of time practicing on it, and that's not what we're going to do at all. Just the opposite. We had our game plan, and then we had a fictitious game plan. But it was so totally different; we'd be in different formations than what we're gong to use. Different defensive alignments. All that kind of stuff."
Smith: Capsule and summarize the ability of that ’54 team – the team that played in the Orange Bowl in ’54 – your ’53 team.
"They were just – a football team being a team, that’s the best thing you can say about them. We had no great stars. J.D. Roberts who was player – by today’s standards he could still play, he could play for anybody, but he’s not that big by today’s standards. They just played together. They believed they could win and they were able to do it."
Smith: Tell me about (practicing for bowl games with) thirteen men on defense.
"Because of that experience that I described, the January 1, 1949 game, (the spying incident with LSU at the '49 Sugar Bowl), I was just never comfortable that you could control what would happen at a bowl game when you're there for five days and you don't really have any security that you can really count on. And I don't think there are a lot of people who are going to try to take advantage of that, but it was such a shock when this happened the first time.
"If you have thirteen people, and they're all wearing the same jersey, it's almost impossible to find out who's in the game or who isn't. If you're playing a 5 - 2 defense and you've got three linebackers in the game and five secondary people - which ones are in and which ones aren't? They can't tell because all of them are making their moves, but the coaches know who the two guys are who are supposed to be in and who's not.
"So it's really easy to coach. I just don't think that there's any way that you can effectively get the defensive pattern if you're doing it that way. The reason that you're not worried about offense is that they can know all of the plays that you've got, but they don't know when you're going to run them. But if they can practice against you defensive alignment it's a big help."
Smith: So you would always put your extra two guys in the secondary?
"No, we'd do it on the line of scrimmage too. The line isn't - you're either 'odd' or 'even' or you're in the gaps. It doesn't make all that big a difference, it's where the linebackers are shading or are they over shifting? Is the defensive secondary tilted right, tilted left, are they going to invert or what?"
Smith: Give me more detail, if you will, on how you might utilize them in the secondary.
"You're always going to have the two cornerbacks - so the other three guys are just set across the field. You don't know really whether they're rolled up to the left, or wherever they've rolled up to the right, because you don't know which of these deep guys are actually in the game.
Those are two defenses that you probably got. You've also got one where you're 'standard' - where you've got two and two. But who's going to come with the snap is dependant upon which way you've rolled up and if they don't know which way you're rolled up, they can't tell who's coming because you get two guys coming and they don't know who's for real."